Characters who are constantly making witty jokes and wry observations, no matter how clever and funny they are, will not elicit more than a smile from the rest of the cast. Real people might consider them charmers, but in-universe they are seen as annoying losers.

Examples:

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In an American Express commercial, Jerry Seinfeld performs in Britain and his stand up with American cultural idioms is met with stony silence. Fortunately, with his Amex card, he goes on a whirlwind cultural immersion and he creates a British savvy act that brings the house down.

Comic Books

Yorick from Y: The Last Man peppers his speech with pop culture references, to which 355 reacts with indifference and Dr. Mann with snarkiness. This can be read as either an example or a subversion of the trope, depending on how funny you think he is.

In the classic film, A Night at the Opera, Groucho Marx's character improvises an opening speech at an opera theatre that in real life would have brought the house down with laughter and inspire thunderous applause for making a normally boring formality so entertaining, but in the film, evoked only stony silence.

In the Marx's earlier film Monkey Business the director told the extras in the party scene to laugh when Harpo did something funny because he was afraid the movie's audience wouldn't laugh otherwise, thinking that there was something wrong with him.

Arthur Bach, a Fun Personifiedmillionaire playboy, deals with this constantly and often finds himself the only one laughing — and comments upon that. ("Tell me, has there been a death in your family? This is funny stuff here.") He drops the trope name when he visits his fiance's humorless father and can't make the butler or him crack a smile with his quips about such things as the stuffed-and-mounted moose head on the wall. "This is a tough room — I don't need to tell you [the moose] that." One reason he and working-class Linda fall in love is because she does appreciate his sense of humor.

Live Action TV

Exception: Supporting characters on Raines frequently smile or chuckle at the title character's one-liners.

Sports Night subverts this quite nicely with most characters, especially Danny. Whenever anyone makes a joke, or just an amusing comment, the other characters actually laugh!

This was actually first introduced as a way to hide the canned laughter showrunner Aaron Sorkin had been stuck within the early days of the series. He hated it, so for most of his funny lines, he tried to have a couple characters just off camera so viewers could at least pretend that the canned laughter came from somewhere. Later, when they were able to get rid of it, they kept the characters laughing at each others' jokes.

Justified with John Crichton from Farscape. He makes a lot of references to American pop culture... to aliens. And they definitely don't steal cable; none of them have any idea where Earth is. Even with Translator Microbes Crichton comes across as a lunatic constantly spouting nonsense.

And as you might expect, the trope is generally avoided in Curb Your Enthusiasm, and often in Seinfeld.

An example with something other than humour: in Criminal Minds, Reid is a walking encyclopedia who is always willing to share some kind of interesting fact with his teammates, but they never seem to want to hear it.

In Friends, Chandler is sometimes acknowledged as funny by the others in early episodes, but they laugh less and less as the series goes on, suggesting they are getting tired of him. It doesn't help that most of his jokes are about them and their crises.

Although House is almost always making sarcastic quips, none of the characters in-universe find them funny. Justified in that he's either mocking them or Crossing the Line Twice at a patient's expense.

They do occasionally avert this trope, but only when it's a plot point (as in the episode where Foreman contracted an infection which made him giddy).

Mash has a lot of witty one-liners, mostly done by Hawkeye, but there weren't many times when people were laughing. Most probably because the situation they were in and Hawkeye was like an early Chandler.

This is noticeably averted in How I Met Your Mother, where this trope is a pet peeve of the writers. Anytime a character on the show is intentionally telling a joke, only the actor playing the character telling the joke is told the joke beforehand. Thus, the other characters listening to the joke will laugh, or at least smirk, at the joke since this is the first time the other actors have heard it.

Castle's quips are largely ignored, especially in the earlier seasons. As the show went on and the cops became more acclimated to Castle's presence, they started to crack a smile now and then, and now Ryan and Esposito sometimes join in when Castle launches into his Incredibly Lame Puns.

While The Thick of It does use Actually Pretty Funny quite a lot, too—it's set in a very aggressive environment where being funnier than everyone around you is both a survival strategy and proof of dominance—it's worth pointing out that even characters treated by everyone else as stupid (like Manchild Phil) or annoying (Beleaguered Bureaucrat Terri) are all far, far funnier, wittier and quicker than anyone could possibly be in real life. This comes under Acceptable Breaks from Reality in that these characterizations are expressed instead by the quality of their observations, rather than not having them make them (for instance, the other Coalition politicians disgustedly remark that all of Phil's clever references and comparisons are to fiction, usually fantasy fiction (The Lord of the Rings), fiction aimed at children (Doctor Who), or both (Harry Potter). It's also played within that even though Malcolm is acknowledged in-universe as an incredibly funny person, most other characters are far too terrified of him to dare laugh at anything he does most of the time.

There's one scene where the name of Ollie's favourite film temporarily slips Malcolm's mind and so he describes it as "the one about the fucking hairdresser, the space hairdresser and the cowboy. He's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin. His father's a robot and he's fuckin' fucked his sister. LEGO, they're all made of fucking LEGO." Even after Ollie figures out what the film is (Star Wars), he reacts with bewilderment and mild annoyance instead of the hysterical laughter this would more likely cause.

In The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will attends the funeral of Uncle Phil's former mentor turned political rival, a cantankerous and perverted creep who died when Will shouted at him to drop dead. When it turns out that all the "mourners" there hated the man and are just there to make sure he's really dead, a guilty Will chews them out. One demands to know who he is; Will says "I'm the dude that killed him", causing the room to erupt with applause. Will drops this trope's name in response.

Nick Di Paolo encounters this in Louie when he attempts to lay one on the then-recently elected Barack Obama. He takes out his resentment at what he perceives as White Guilt on Louie himself.

The Doctor: The controls are straightforward; even a monkey could use them! Oh look, they're going to! [beat]The Doctor: Guys, come on, comedy gold! Where's a Silurian audience when you need one!

Newspaper Comics

This is common in Calvin and Hobbes. There are times when you wonder if the title characters are the only people with imagination or a sense of humour in the entire town. One of the more obvious examples is Calvin's mom's comment on how people are moving out of the neighborhood because they find Calvin's snowmen disgusting. In real life, the sheer amount of creativity and work Calvin puts in them would net the area frequent visitors every winter.

Stand-Up Comedy

Comedian Rodney Dangerfield would often incorporate a "tough crowd" into his stand-up comedy, pulling at his necktie and sweating along with self-deprecating humor, as part of his signature style.

The Flash in Justice League is sometimes deliberately subject to this trope. He's surrounded by a number of Comically Serious characters, and he tends to have a Silver Age sense of humor. When he gets his Day in the Limelight, the audience finds out he's actually quite capable of being serious and practical.

Numbuh Two in Codename: Kids Next Door often finds his attempts at One Liners met with groans, complains, or outright assault from his fellow agents (especially Numbuh Five).

In "Baby Cakes" Pinkie Pie attempts to cheer up the crying Cake Twins with a standup act. This elicits Chirping Crickets, and Pinkie dropping the trope name.

In "Make New Friends and Keep Discord", Discord attempts to hijack the Grand Galloping Gala with standup comedy. Similar to Pinkie, he references the trope when it doesn't get the response he wants. Even worse, it's Maud Pie's deadpan heckling of him that gets the laughs.

In "Night of the Living Duck", Daffy dreams he's about to perform in at a nightclub where the audience, is made up of famous monsters, mostly the Universal Monsters "Gee, tough audience!" he quips. Fortunately, he finds a bottle of "Eu de Torme", that lets him sing like Mel Torme (who does his singing voice in the cartoon) and he's a hit.

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